Lake Elmo, MN to sue 3M for PFCs pollution-related costs
Posted on July 26, 2016 by Sheryl Barr
Source: Saint Paul Pioneer Press (MN), July 21, 2016
Posted on: http://www.advisen.com
Lake Elmo is suing the 3M Corp. — again — for allegedly polluting its water and forcing the city to build a clean-water bypass.
The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to sue the company after backing out of another suit against 3M in 2013.
“The two lawsuits are very similar,” said Lake Elmo attorney Doug Shaftel. He said the city has been trying to negotiate with 3M for some reimbursement, without success.
Neither he nor other Lake Elmo officials would comment further about the suit or estimate how much money the city spent because of the chemicals.
To provide untainted water to residents, the city received $3.5 million from the state in 2014. But it is not known if that was enough to compensate for the cost of dealing with the pollution.
Traces of PFCs — perfluorochemicals — made by 3M were found in groundwater in 2004. The pollution affected about 60,000 residents of Lake Elmo, Woodbury, Oakdale and Cottage Grove.
Lake Elmo officials shut down a city well that was only four years old, saying the pollution was a public health threat. The shuttered well was near Interstate 94 and Inwood Avenue, in a fast-growing part of the city.
To serve that area with water, officials built new water mains north along Inwood A
venue.
The city tried to compel 3M to pay for that water line in 2011, when it joined a lawsuit by the state of Minnesota.
STALLED LAWSUIT
The state sued 3M for “damage to the environment,” based on the PFCs appearing in state rivers and lakes. No dollar amount was specified, but lawsuits in other states involving the same pollutants have resulted in settlements in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
The state’s lawsuit has been stalled since it was filed in 2010. Lake Elmo bailed out of the suit in 2014.
With the new lawsuit, Lake Elmo is continuing to reach the same goal — getting paid back for expenses related to the PFCs.
The expenses were unique to Lake Elmo. Out of all the cities affected by the pollution, only Lake Elmo shut down a city well and built new water pipes to other wells.
Most affected cities, including Oakdale, put extra filters on their city water plants to handle the PFCs. Officials in other cities didn’t believe that spending millions to remove the PFCs was justified.
But Lake Elmo has no water treatment plant, according to city administrator Kristina Handt, so it was impossible to install filters that would remove PFCs.
3M SURPRISED BY ACTION
In an emailed response, 3M attorney William A. Brewer said, “3M is surprised Lake Elmo would consider, much less pursue, any claims in connection with this issue.”
The amounts of the PFCs are far too small to harm the health of anyone, he said. “The state of Minnesota has been unable to identify a single person who has suffered an adverse health effect due to environmental exposure to these materials,” wrote Brewer.
He added that pollution that came from a landfill in Lake Elmo was the legal responsibility of the state Pollution Control Agency, and not 3M.
3M manufactured the chemicals starting in the 1940s, for use in household products including Teflon and stain repellent. The company legally dumped some of the chemicals into the landfills in Woodbury, Lake Elmo and Oakdale, ending in the 1970s.
But the chemicals leached into the groundwater. That worried state officials because in mega-doses they have caused cancer, birth defects and thyroid problems in mice. Traces of the chemicals have been detected in people and animals worldwide.
3M stopped making PFCs in 2002.
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Lake Elmo threatens to sue 3M over unusable city well
The company denies it's at fault, and the city acknowledges polluted well was never put in use.
By David Peterson Star Tribune
July 22, 2016 — 7:50pm
Lake Elmo city leaders are threatening to sue 3M Co. for pollution that made its way into a city well. But the city’s attorney in the case cautions that the city may never proceed.
“We have the authority we need to go forward,” said City Attorney Doug Shaftel, “but it’s only a suit on the day we file.”
Translation: Last week’s City Council resolution threatening a suit was a rumble of thunder signaling that Lake Elmo’s patience is running thin — and that there may well be litigation if 3M doesn’t resolve things.
In response, 3M attorney William Brewer expressed surprise that “Lake Elmo would consider, much less pursue, any claims in connection with this issue.”
The dispute between the Washington County suburb and the Maplewood-based company, the biggest in the east metro area, has to do with perfluorochemicals (PFCs). City officials say they had been used since the 1950s at a 3M plant in Cottage Grove, and disposed of in the following decades at a since-closed county landfill in Lake Elmo and a 3M disposal facility in adjoining Oakdale.
In 2002, Lake Elmo drilled a well, which was found four years later to have PFCs. City officials said the source was 3M and that concentrations exceeded state and federal limits. The city couldn’t use the well and needed to find other means to deliver water, causing “substantial response costs and [unspecified] monetary damages.”
Lake Elmo has tried to negotiate a settlement with 3M, according to last week’s council resolution, but without success. So the city is threatening a federal suit.
Speaking for 3M, Brewer said: “We have seen no evidence that this community is currently impacted by the environmental presence of PFCs. 3M voluntarily exited from these chemicals well more than a decade ago and, since that time, has worked closely with state regulators and community stakeholders to remediate PFCs from the environment.
“In any event, there is no evidence that these chemicals present any harm to human health at the levels they are typically found in the environment — and that includes in Lake Elmo. The state of Minnesota has been unable to identify a single person who has suffered an adverse health effect due to environmental exposure to these materials.”
Any fault may rest, he said, with state regulators and their “management of the Washington County Landfill. The MPCA [Minnesota Pollution Control Agency] has responsibility to address any releases of PFCs from that facility.”
Shaftel declined to elaborate beyond the council resolution, other than to clarify that the PFCs never endangered public health.
“The well in which we found contamination in ’06 was never opened, it was never pumped for public consumption,” he said Friday. “It was drilled and then capped for potential future development, then tested in its dormancy, and the PFCs were found.”